Tick

In my grandparents’ shop in the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, debt wasn’t so much a matter of money as a sort of permanent fixture — like the weighing scales or the flypaper. Nobody thought of it as debt. It was just “tick,” and everybody had some. The shop was the beating heart of the village, and part of that was letting people have things on trust until Friday. Mrs Whittaker, say, popping in for her twenty Park Drive, would be told by my mother — or my grandmother, depending on whose turn it was — “Oh, and there’s six and seven on your slate.” If Mrs Whittaker paid up, fine. If she didn’t, my mother would sigh in the manner of someone taking on an additional personal bereavement and say, “All right, love. But I will be putting your name in the window.” I never recall her actually doing it, though the possibility was enough to keep the village in a state of mild moral vigilance. In a mining community where everybody knew everybody’s business — and some of their underwear — the threat of public naming was a more effective deterrent than any bailiff. Fast forward several decades and I now find myself on the other side of the counter, working as a freelancer. It’s like running a shop where the customers never come in — just emails from people you met three months ago asking for “a quick quote” and then vanishing into the mist. Debt these days is less the cosy camaraderie of “tick” and more a case of staring at your online banking, willing something to appear before the direct debits find out there’s nothing in there. With TV or film jobs, my agent deals with it all — contracts, payment terms, reminders — and generally, it works. But in the looser, altogether more whimsical world of freelance work, invoices have a tendency to slip down the back of someone’s inbox and stay there, like a lost slipper behind a radiator. Systems crash, forms go missing, and I find myself implementing the Beans-on-Toast Budget until matters resolve. It’s a delicate operation, asking to be paid. You want to sound polite but with just enough edge to suggest you might be forced to eat the family pet if they don’t act soon. I sometimes think back to my grandmother’s approach — the quiet, weary sigh, the casual mention of the window. I wonder if I could get away with that now. Perhaps an Instagram story: “People who owe me money” in nice copperplate. The moral is simple. If you hire a freelancer — be it a decorator, a designer, or someone to dress up as a Victorian postbox for your product launch — pay them on time. Not just because it’s decent, but because it’s the best way to negotiate a discount. No one wants their name in the window. Because whether it’s a corner shop in a mining village or a corporate project in Canary Wharf, the principle’s the same: kindness and prompt payment keep the wheels turning. And if you can manage both, you’ll never find yourself immortalised in anyone’s shop window — or worse, their Instagram feed.